In The News

More than half of all Australian franchise brands and more than a quarter of all New Zealand brands have attended a Franchise Advisory Centre event. In May, five top workshops for franchisors and their leadership teams return to Auckland.

Chris Quin, the new Foodstuffs North Island chief executive, said this week that the move was a big step forward for the business and its customers.

Rival Countdown has offered online grocery orders for many years, he acknowledged. But Quin said he expected click-and-collect orders to be a significant market share, whereby customers would order online but collect the goods themselves.

The supermarket chain will use trucks and staff from each store to deliver the goods, rather than contracting the service out, he said.

More than 10 per cent of New Zealand retail sales were now online so he projected big growth. "New Zealand has a growing population and it's getting harder and harder to buy sites, so you can serve more customers," he said, indicating new supermarket development rates might fall as online picks up.

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The length of time it had taken Foodstuffs to go ahead with online orders was partly driven by resistance from supermarket owners, the critic claimed.

The online supermarket model was internationally challenging because big scales of business were needed to make home deliveries of food items work to cover the extremely high costs involved, he said.

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Mettrick said he had no issue with the Inno's decision to cancel the franchise agreements. 

In reference to the outstanding franchise fees, Mettrick's solicitor Mark Odlin said the entities may owe historic franchisee fee arrears to Stonewood Homes New Zealand Ltd, a debt which Inno may have purchased from the receivers.

If it was the case, the entities, not Mettrick personally, owed the money to Inno.

Before making the decision, Webber said Inno Capital was in contact with the Registered Master Builders Association. It has plans to ensure homeowners affected by the decision got "the best outcomes".

Meanwhile, work to complete the first 50 homes in Canterbury affected by Stonewood's receivership started this week.

The brothers, whose assets include commercial property, hotels and strip clubs, said the deal covered both the national franchise rights and the Christchurch franchisee.

"Stonewood complements our office, retail, accommodation, and car park property portfolio," John Chow said in a statement in Christchurch on Wednesday. 

"This purchase signals our clear intention to repair recent damage to the brand and to re-establish the Stonewood brand nationally on a very firm footing."

Last Thursday, the Chow brothers and Webber met the 44 remaining employees of the company and offered them "new contracts on similar terms", they said in a statement.

"While we still have quite a process to work through with the receivers, our next step will be to engage urgently with customers with uncompleted homes.

"It's vital we provide certainty for customers who have been affected. We have a management team of eleven here in Christchurch to seal the deal but we ask for tolerance from affected parties," Webber said.

Shortly after the company was placed in receivership, 41 staff were laid off.

Grant Graham of KordaMentha said the sale to Inno Capital included the business and assets of the companies.

The "prompt sale" was the best possible outcome in the circumstances, he said.

Restaurant Brands [NZX: RBD] is expanding its footprint across the Tasman, acquiring  Australia's second-largest KFC franchise for $A82.4 million.

The deal sees Restaurant Brands acquire all the shares in QSR Pty – the largest KFC franchisee in New South Wales – owned by Australian property developer Stephen Copulos.

A notice to the NZX this morning states QSR is a profitable operator with 42 stores, generating sales in excess of $A100 million and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of more than $A15 million a year.

The headline of its news release said the company was entering Italy "with humility and respect" for the country. Schultz said he plans to develop a coffee blend specifically for the Italian market and add a bar for customers to stand at, as is custom in Italian coffeehouses.

The company will also be going local with a partner, working with Percassi - which Srere noted is "hugely respected in Italy" - as the licensee to operate its stores.

Branding experts said the humble and local approach was the right one.

"You've got to go and kiss the ring here - you don't mess around with Italy and coffee," Ries said. Companies need "to be authentic, and to not just be the big American brand with guns blazing, coming in to take over the town."

On Monday, KordaMentha's Grant Graham and Neale Jackson were appointed as receivers of Stonewood Homes New Zealand Ltd – the master franchisor of the Stonewood Group – and sister companies Stonewood Homes Ltd and Sterling Homes (Christchurch).

The company owes about $15 million to unsecured creditors and has 110 unfinished homes. Receivers are still calculating the outstanding debt to secured creditors.

They want to strike a deal to sell the business and its assets. The buyer would hopefully preserve some of the 85 jobs at stake, finish uncompleted homes and potentially take on Stonewood sub-contractors left in the cold. It is unlikely a buyer would purchase the company and its debt.

Graham said he wanted the sale to happen within weeks. The company was already well-advanced in a recapitalisation process and he hoped that interest would be converted into a sale.

Graham said more than 10 parties had expressed interest to varying degrees. He was "cautiously optimistic" of a sale.

Starbucks has 78 stores in Saudi Arabia, all of which have gender walls to separate single men from potential temptresses— apart from one store, reserved for women and children.

When Starbucks finally responded to the controversy, it explained that the shop’s ban on ladies had been lifted.

“At Starbucks, we adhere to the local customs of Saudi Arabia by providing separate entrances for families as well as single people. In addition, all our stores provide equal amenities, service, menu, and seating to men, women and families,” the company said in a statement to CNN.

“We are working as quickly as possible as we refurbish our Jarir store so that we may again welcome all customers in accordance with local customs.”

This didn’t cut it with the protesters, who began to tweet memes comparing the situation with Apartheid South Africa.

KordaMentha confirmed on Tuesday that Stonewood Homes New Zealand Limited was in receivership at the request of the company.

Grant Graham and Neale Jackson of KordaMentha have been appointed as receivers to the company Stonewood Homes New Zealand Limited, and sister companies Stonewood Homes Limited and Sterling Homes (Christchurch) Limited. 

Stonewood is one of Canterbury's biggest home builders.

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The Master Builders Association is in the process of contacting all of the Stonewood Homes Christchurch homeowners to inform them of the process and ensure that in the short term they do nothing to compromise their rights under the guarantee.

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In a state of the industry survey by Massey University's Centre for Advanced Retail Studies, 263 retailers reported that 60 per cent to 89 per cent of their revenue still comes from bricks and mortar.

Associate professor Jonathan Elms said suggestions that the internet would 'obliterate the physical retail landscape' were wrong. 'Only a relatively small percentage of respondents were just pure-play internet retailers so there's obviously going to be some bias to say, stores are the way forward.'

The seminars are being run by Franchize Consultants (NZ) Ltd, the long-established Auckland-based company which has won the Service Provider of the Year Award in the New Zealand Franchise Awards for a record six times. Presenters include Dr Callum Floyd, who has worked with many local and international franchise systems, and Michelle Bentham, who has worked in a wide variety of management roles with both McDonald's and Subway, as well as being a multi-unit franchisee herself.

This year, Franchize Consultants have added two financially-focused seminars to their popular series in association with MYOB.

'New Zealand has strengths that I think make it resilient to the global economy at the present time,' Hess said, citing falling government debt that is below other similarly rated countries, improving prospects for service exports such as tourism and education, and booming immigration.

'These are all these positive aspects that are offsetting any negatives that are coming from the farm sector,' he said.

Westpac’s Economic Overview summarises the outlook for the New Zealand economy, global economy, agriculture sector, interest rates and exchange rate. This quarter's special topic covers New Zealand's commitments under the Paris Protocol. Read the full report here.

Financial adviser Chris Lee said Veritas should never have been a publicly-listed company.  He said Mad Butcher should have remained a franchised chain of butcheries. "The public should not have been asked to put up money."

Veritas said it would write down the value of its assets by $5.4 million. It is also looking for a chief executive.

Veritas was formed in 2011 through a reverse share market listing. It operates the Mad Butcher franchisor business, has a half share in Kiwi Pacific Foods, owns nosh Food Market and the Better Bar Company.

In a sharemarket update, Veritas said most Mad Butcher stores were trading profitably and the brand was a major contributor to the group's profitability.

But it was not without problems.

"Currently, there are five VIL-owned stores in the network that, in spite of extensive support from the franchisor, have consistently failed to achieve budgets for a number of reasons, including location and the inability to find appropriately qualified and experienced franchisees."

McDonald's, which has more than 36,000 locations around the world, is working to turnaround its business under CEO Steve Easterbrook, who will mark one year on the job in March.

One of the biggest changes under Easterbrook was to make the Egg McMuffin and other select breakfast foods available past normal breakfast hours in the U.S. - an option many customers had long desired. The changes come after McDonald's executives conceded they failed to keep up with changing tastes and saw sales slide.

The woman was standing in line at the Cheesecake Shop on Tarewa Rd, waiting to buy a cake for her daughter's birthday when an elderly motorist crashed into the shop.

The shop's owner, Jenny Gu, said: 'It's terrible. It hit a lady and her kid. They were just standing beside the case waiting for service and the car crashed into them.'

Franchisee sources told Fairfax Media a key concern with the new agreement was that it didn't provide all stores with enough of an income boost to offset a new clause in the contract that places all future liability for the underpayment of workers on the franchisee. Some franchisees were also concerned that the new deal doesn't address what will happen to the low-income-generating franchisees when their contracts expire. 

The 7-Eleven spokesman said this was not an admission by the company that its model had contributed to the underpayment of staff.

Mr Levitt said the $25 million offer would not be enough to cover the full amount of claims brought against a store owner or any fines issued by the Fair Work Ombudsman.